Joe R. Reeder, an undersecretary for the U.S. Army from 1993 to 1997, has gone on record with claims that a number of figures around the world have or have had decoys, including Manuel Noriega, Raoul Cédras, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Osama bin Laden.
[1] Of Noriega's four alleged decoys, Reeder said, "They were good: They practiced his gait, his manner of speech and his modus operandi – what he did during the day and night."
Soldier M. E. Clifton James successfully impersonated General Bernard Montgomery ("Monty") for intelligence purposes during World War II.
Niven, then a Colonel in the Army Kinematograph Section, told James he wanted him to impersonate "Monty", as this would allow Montgomery to be somewhere else, thus confusing the Germans.
The second (and less famous) "Monty's Double", Keith Deamer Banwell,[4] was serving with the land-based Long Range Desert Group.
During a subsequent raid on Crete he was taken prisoner at Heraklion and put under the personal supervision of former world heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling, who was serving in the German Army.
With the help of some Cretan fishermen they made their getaway, but the craft ran out of fuel and drifted for 9 days before reaching the North African coast.
It was decided that he participate in deception ploys, and so Banwell was sent to Cairo to meet Montgomery, given the appropriate clothing, insignia and General's badges and sent on trips around the Middle East to confuse enemy spies.
Rashid spent two years studying with Alexei Dikiy, an actor who played the role of Stalin in propaganda films.
[8] The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had planned to bring down Indonesia's first president Sukarno by portraying him in a pornographic film in the late 1950s.
The agency put together a pornographic film starring a Sukarno look-alike in bed with a blonde playing a Soviet agent.
[13] In 2003, German television network ZDF broadcast claimed that Iraq's former president Saddam Hussein was frequently replaced with doubles for TV appearances.
"[16] These are generally exceptionally good impersonators, who are used to give the impression that their "target" is conducting a radio interview, telephone call or other vocal assignment.
According to Wright, an unknown individual impersonated President Truman's voice on the telephone in order to sway foreign leaders into voting in particular ways at the United Nations.
[17] In the first, Truman wrote: Wright comments In a cross-gender voice impersonation in 1971, a former captain of the Indian Army named Rustom Sohrab Nagarwala (male) was able to take out 6 million rupees from the State Bank of India by mimicking the voice of prime minister Indira Gandhi to chief cashier Ved Prakash Malhotra.
This legend "explained" why Elizabeth never married, why she went bald in middle age, and why she said she had the heart and stomach of a king in the Tilbury speech.
[24] In Japan, during the Sengoku period, military commanders prepared substitutes called kagemusha, meaning "shadow samurai".